A few months ago a friend of mine was doing some kind of a financial tour of Europe for work, and he told me expected a big xenophobic, anti-immigrant backlash as the economy there circled the drain. Here we have it:
President Nicolas Sarkozy, running from behind for a second term, has veered sharply to the right in the final days before Sunday’s runoff in the French presidential election, increasingly appealing to nationalism and anti-immigrant fears to gain support from the far-right National Front.
And:
The rise of Wilders in the Netherlands is a cautionary tale for a continent in the midst of a debt crisis and where painful recessions, soaring unemployment and rising apathy among youths are fueling the strongest swell of support in decades for anti-immigrant nationalists.
I told him he was prescient about this and he replied “I wonder if there has ever been a crisis in Europe where immigrants or a different religion hasn’t been scapegoated”.
Schlemizel
Fixed that for you
Bill ORLY
He always was a little runt.
4tehlulz
Answer: No, unless you restrict it to “the Jews”.
Martin
I wonder if there has ever been a crisis in human history where ‘It’s their fault!’ hasn’t been the default response.
Theo
Communist terrorism in the ’70s?
DougJ, Head of Infidelity
@Martin:
I know. I do think it is a bit worse in Europe than here though.
Comrade Mary
Attention, Dan Savage. The world has need of your neologistic skills once again.
Martin
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity: That’s only because Europe has easier labels for people due to language, clearly identified cultural attachments, etc.
Our melting pot makes that a bit harder. Nobody minds blaming Cali, though. Or Alabama for that matter. But in the end we hang liberal/conservative around everyone’s neck and just use that in place of ‘German’ or ‘Italian’.
Chris
Nicolas Sarkozy: the French Richard Nixon, the man who jumped off the deep end right into the Southern Strategy pool. Christ, that’s depressing.
Almost as depressing was finding out yesterday that someone I knew in high school is now a National Front supporter.
BGinCHI
You’d think a guy named Sarkozy would know better….
Bobby Thomson
You know who else
Chris
@BGinCHI:
Sarkozy’s a white guy, from a white background. Not like those OTHER people.
BGinCHI
@Chris:
Wiki:
In France this does not quite make him your average pure Frenchman. Just saying he can’t trace his family back to protect his French roots.
Nutella
@Chris:
Yes, obviously a guy whose ancestry is 50% Hungarian and 25% Greek is a true Frenchman, not like those nasty immigrants.
4tehlulz
He’s not a true Frenchman unless he invades Algeria.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity: European racism is very polite, never spoken publicly, utter and absolute in its scope.
It seems strange to us Americans – with our “born here and you’re in” laws, to see a situation where you could have descendants of immigrants to a European nation who’ve been there for four generations who have ZERO CHANCE EVER of becoming citizens, but that’s how all their laws are written.
America’s a bit of an anomaly that way.
Deen
I’m afraid your friend wasn’t really that prescient, as Sarkozy and Wilders courting nationalist and anti-immigrant sentiments shouldn’t really be news.
Linnaeus
Austerity policies in Europe aren’t going to help the situation.
Chris
@BGinCHI:
@Nutella:
Sure, I’m just talking from Sarkozy’s POV.
No less an authority than Jean-Marie Le Pen made the same observation before – saying “If I had become Hungarian, though I was of French origins, it would not occur to me to run for office as president of Hungary.” Didn’t stop people from voting Sarkozy in, but I doubt if an Arab immigrant would’ve gotten through as easily.
The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of compassion
@Martin: No, we defaulted to skin color as a substitute for nationality.
catclub
I have no impression that the Prussian/German Invasion of France in 1871 was based on either immigration or religion.
Also the revolution of 1848.
I suspect most of the Napoleonic wars were royalist paranoia and nationalism, less than religion and immigration.
(Note, a good bit of religion in the Guerilla wars of Napoleonic Spain. But a lot of royalist paranoia wrapped up in that.)
Heck, WWI was not about religion or immigration. More just nationalism and power politics run amuck.
So, plenty.
beltane
I’d like to say that history repeats first as tragedy and then as farce except that there’s a better than even chance this will also end up as tragedy. What we are witnessing is the ugly death of centrism in the absence of an organized and coherent Left.
Deen
Your friend was right when he said:
However, he would have been more right if he had replaced “Europe” by “World”. Europe isn’t exactly unique in this respect, unfortunately.
catclub
@Forum Transmitted Disease: “America’s a bit of an anomaly that way.”
And the right wing wants to change it to be just like Europe.
Although they never seem to put it that way, as all those Yurpeens are soshulizts, except for Maggie Thatcher.
BGinCHI
@Chris: Agreed. His aristocratic background is the deciding factor in his being an asshole. He’s like a cheap Rothschild.
Chris
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
Is it really? We’ve got Mexicans whose families have been living on U.S. soil since before it was U.S. soil that our bigots lump in with illegal immigrants.
Unless you mean there are more of those bigots over there than here – that I don’t know about.
beltane
@Linnaeus: No it won’t, because so far the fascist far-right parties across Europe have been the only force powerful enough to even attempt taking on the Austerity Monster. All I can say is that the Left better get its act together in a hurry.
Steve in DC
I have family in the Netherlands and this has been going on for a LONG time now. It’s become worse with the economic crash, but that’s not the root cause.
The Dutch built their social safety net when they were a rather homogenous society and people were all on about equal economic footing. Since the large influx of Middle Eastern and North African immigrants came in that safety net has been stretched thin. Simply put, the new immigrants don’t contribute as much to the safety net via taxes and yet extract more from it than the ethnic Dutch do. This has put considerable strain on their welfare state and created stress that outside immigrants are ruining services provided by the Dutch.
To make matters worse there is a culture clash. Several Dutch have been slain or attacked for speaking out against radical Islam. Furthermore many Islamic fundamentalists have attacked Dutch cultural issues such as nudity and sexuality as insulting Islam and demanded the government do something about it because it’s a war on their religion. While at the same time imposing Islamic rules in their own community that go against Dutch law and culture and demanded it be tolerated because not to do so is insulting Islam.
The government was curtailing traditional Dutch freedoms out of worry that Muslims would be upset and at the same time allowing Muslims to carry out cultural traditions that ran against Dutch law.
Imagine if a shit ton of bible belt mother fuckers moved into San Fransisco and demanded all the porn and sex shops be shut down because it was rude to Christians, got the local government to back them. Then started beating gay children and saying women can’t go to school because of their religion and got the government to go along with them. How would San Fransisco react? That’s pretty much what happened in the Netherlands.
The end result was that the Dutch took a hard right turn to preserve the state they had. Austerity is making things worse due to more strain on the nation, but this backlash started around the time Van Gogh was slain by Islamists in the street and the Dutch governments reaction was “give the fundies what they want”.
liberal
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
Yeah, it’s weird. I recall some German person, perhaps even a pretty liberal one, interviewed as part of a segment on NPR or something acting as if the way they do things is normal and just.
Jus soli is one of the better things about America.
amk
marine le pen has already told sarks to GFH. So your pal is talking shit.
Someguy
@Steve in DC:
Bigot. Way to rationalize right wing Dutch racism and religious bigotry. It’s a democracy. If the Dutch don’t like what the people vote for, they can move.
liberal
Well, of course ultimately the immigrants pay quite a bit. Only thing is it goes to landowners, not the government. But most people, including almost all economists, don’t understand that.
catclub
@Chris: No, he means that if you are born here, you are a citizen. The 14th amendment guarantees it. They may not be treated as citizens by their
fellow citizens, but they are citizens.
This is explicitly different from most European nations.
I do not agree with FTD that “European racism is very polite, never spoken publicly, utter and absolute in its scope.” I gather it is pretty out much in the open.
The right wing here wants to cancel the 14th amendment, to be like Europe.
Anoniminous
Sarkozy was elected on a Right Wing Platform/Agenda. He has to run further to the right because he lost the Center a long time ago and picking-up Le Pen voters is his only chance.
Steve in DC
@Someguy
LMAO
I’m not and I don’t really care what you think. I just gave you a description of a situation that’s been boiling over in the Netherlands, and it’s pretty accurate.
European nations don’t seem to integrate their immigrants into their culture the way America does. It’s just not how things work there. So whereas our Muslim immigrants become part of greater America and integrate into communities here, in Europe they live in small ethnic areas that are often ghettos and clash with the native citizenry.
It’s a huge problem in some countries. My relatives in Germany don’t have this problem as most of their immigrants are secular Turks so there is no culture clash, but in the Netherlands there definately is one and it has a body count.
Chris
@catclub:
Ah, yes. I see your point now.
Someguy
@Steve in DC:
It’s self defense. Dutch nationalists go around propagandizing and trying to gin up a lynch mob, they shouldn’t be surprised when one of the targets launches a pre-emptive strike.
Steve in DC
@Someguy
No it’s not. Not when fundamentalists killed Van Gogh and others. Not when they attacked Dutch womens freedom to dress how they want in public. Not when they demanded a rolling back of Dutch womens rights. Not when they demanded to be allowed to mutilate female genetalia. Not when they started killing Dutch sex workers.
That’s what they did. The Dutch government BACKED THIS. If you think American Conservatives have a war on women it’s nothing compared to what’s been happening to women in the Netherlands because of their immigrants.
The Dutch decided womens rights, childrens rights, sexual freedom was worth protecting and they fought back.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Steve in DC: You agenda is more transparent than a sheet of glass. Maybe time for a new handle, yes?
But we do thank you for your concern.
Steve in DC
It’s not really my concern. I don’t live there, I live here. That Dutch women get assaulted for dressing improperly does not affect my daily life one bit for all but one week of the year.
handsmile
Here is a link to an excellent Guardian summary of a Demos study on the rise of the far right in Europe. The article includes a separate interactive chart of ultranationalist political groups in a number of Western European and Scandinavian countries:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/06/far-right-rise-europe-report
Grimly, the resurgence of nationalist and openly pro-Nazi parties and sentiment is far more evident in Eastern Europe, as this multi-part series from Global Post examines:
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/120329/anti-semitism-takes-the-stage-hungary-echoes-hitler-pt-1
As amk alluded above (#29), Marine Le Pen at a May Day rally in Paris declared that she will not be voting for either Sarkozy or Hollande. She believe both to advocate policies that will subjugate France to pro-European (read German) authority. While proclaiming that Front National supporters are free to vote their “consciences” in Sunday’s Presidential contest, she insisted that upcoming legislative elections will demonstrate the party’s widespread popularity and political clout.
Deen
@Steve in DC in #27:
Nonsense. There has never been a society where people are all on about the same footing, and the Netherlands certainly wasn’t like that. Like everywhere else, the social movement was a response to the horrible circumstances a lot of workers had to live in the wake of the industrial revolution.
Except that they seem willing to destroy the very thing they say they want to protect. You know, trivial matters like freedom of religion and such.
At #34
Don’t expect people to take your word for it though. Especially those of us that actually live here.
Deen
Citation sorely needed.
catclub
@Deen: “Especially those of us that actually live here.”
lol.
Very impolite to base opinions on superior knowledge of facts on the ground.
Barry
(pardon for skipping ahead)
“I told him he was prescient about this and he replied “I wonder if there has ever been a crisis in the USA where immigrants or a different religion hasn’t been scapegoated”.”
Fixed.
Calouste
@Steve in DC:
Man, you are full of shit. I AM from the Netherlands, all my family lives in the Netherlands, I have dozens of friends in the Netherlands, I read the Dutch news on an almost daily basis. If the situation was as you describe, worse than the Republican War on Women(tm), I’d think I heard something about it by now. You know what I hear people complain about? About your lying, corrupt, facist, racist sack-of-shit friend Wilders.
Good thing the arsehole has quit the coalition, because there won’t be a majority after the elections that wants to work with him.
dmbeaster
Of course, allowing plenty of immigrants in served the interests of the moneyed class, since they tend to depress wages. It is truly dirt ball to then scapegoat them.
redshirt
It seems we are hardwired to fear and distrust “The Other” – whomever that should be.
Thus, I propose the only way to progress is to keep making the pools of “Others” ever smaller, further away. Ergo, the key to peace on Earth is… Aliens.
Then we could have an “Other” we could all hate on, together in harmony!
handsmile
@redshirt:
FYI, my reply (#29) to you on this morning’s Stephen King thread finally got released from moderation.
It was good to be introduced to your blog. And if you happen to be an Ambrose Bierce fan (“Quotation of the Day”), you might be interested to know that the Library of America has just published a collected volume of his works, The Devil’s Dictionary, Tales and Memoirs.
agorabum
@Someguy: All these ad homeniem attacks on Steve are off base. The Netherlands was a pretty tolerant, open place (all those ports breed a certain cosmopolitanism). But they do have a problem if militant Islamist residents committing violence.
Naturally, the people (i.e. the democracy) is against that kind of thing.
So while they have had a turn to the “right”, it’s a strange sort of ‘right’ that is often focused on defending the liberal, secular society. As well as a certain level of xenophobia and racism. Because when you have a platform that “these immigrants are a problem because they are not accepting our cultural norms, do not support our established freedoms, and commit violence” you also get people who are just about the first part of the platform: “these immigrants are a problem.”
There is being racist, and there is responding to concerns about the appropriate integration of immigrants. It’s a complex issue. So give Steve a bit of credit. (i know, i know, internet comment boards not the best place for nuance).
Brachiator
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity:
I think your take on American exceptionalism here is a bit off, but there has been long and detailed reporting about anti immigration sentiment in Europe, and much recent reporting about the challenge of Marine Le Pen in France.
But it’s not just Europe. We have the murder of Christians in Nigeria, the suppression of Coptic Christians in Egypt, all the religious schisms in the Middle East, conflict between India and Pakistan, the absolutely brutal suppression of Tamils in Sri Lanka, ethnic tensions underlying political reform efforts in Malaysia.
Throw a dart at the map. It’s hard not to find some ethnic or religious nastiness not going on.
ETA: what is this horrible stuff about Junior Seau being found dead? Damn. Just damn.
redshirt
@handsmile: Finally! It must have been…. that!… word you used that got you hung up.
Calouste
@agorabum:
The Dutch have had right-wing cabinets since 2002. In the last decade, Labor has been in the coaliton only once, for three years, and they have never had the Prime Minister.
Frankensteinbeck
I will grant you that this is pre- 9/11, but I used to work closely with several immigrants from all over the place – India, East Africa, and a Christian Palestinian are the ones that stick in my memory. They told me that nowhere they had been in the world were they treated better and with less racism than in the US.
This is not meant as praise of the US that is currently going bugfuck over a black man being elected president. It’s meant as a reminder that we’re just not there to SEE the appalling racism in other countries. Humans are, unfortunately, humans.
Tuffy
Keep complaining about Wilders and Le Pen, you stupid jagoffs. They believe in the welfare state and workers rights. And they also see Theo Van Gogh in his grave and the victims of the London subway bomb and hope the same thing doesn’t happen to them.
dutchmarbel
@Steve in DC:
nonsense. Your family might have shown you a rather coloured view. We had 2 political murders, one by a fundi moslim and one by a animal rights nutter. Womens rights are as threatened by our christian fundi parties (mainly because they DO have political powere and the moslims don’t). If you are older then 18 and have lived here for more then 5 years and can proof your Dutch is at adequate level you can get Dutch nationality. Geert Wilder actually *loses* votes at the moment. No muslim has attacked Dutch women for how they dress, sex workers are facing many threats but being attacked by muslims for their nudity is NOT one of them, and female mutilation is NOT an issue brought forward by muslims either. We have not been that homogenous for a long long time (part of having colonies to be honest, not because we had the moral upper ground) and our social net is about 10-15 years older then our ‘immigrant’ policies/problems.
As far as integration goes: I don’t think our problems are worse or even as bad as the US youth gang problems are, or the French Banlieu problems. And we don’t sentence people to more then 17 years in prison for translating the wrong kind of text eiter (Tarek Mehanna) – so much for freedom of speech.
Doesn’t mean we DON’T have problems. It just means you can’t really discuss them when people are just spouting populist idea’s.
liberal
@Brachiator:
Actually, there’s work in progress to fix all that.
Deen
@Tuffy:
You mean unlike all those other politicians who can’t wait to be bombed?
Deen
agorabum Says:
No, it’s not. While Wilders has indeed attracted votes by promising to protect certain social safety net systems, that doesn’t make him a liberal. He’s also suggested the ban of Muslim schools, head scarfs, building new mosques, preaching in languages other than Dutch, and a stop of immigrant admission from “non-Western” countries. None of this I would consider liberal, or even secular.
BTW, don’t you just love the Party For Freedom seems to mostly want to ban things? Sounds positively Orwellian to me.
Besides, it’s only “a strange sort of right” if all you’re used to is the one-dimensionality of US politics.